May 13th, 1829.
SIR -- Your letter of this date, protesting against the survey of any
line in the Cherokee Nation, and particularly against the line I am now marking;
and enclosing a paper purporting to be a treaty with Creeks, at Washington City,
in 1826, together with a copy of an agreement between the Creek and Cherokee
tribes of Indians, in 1814, is before me. I consider it my duty, notwithstanding,
to obey my instructions, and complete the survey, believing that it is not the
province of either the United States Agent for the Cherokees, or myself to determine
the question, whether the determine the question, whether the State of Georgia
is right or wrong in this matter. It may be proper, however, for me to add,
in justification of the course pursuing by the State of Georgia, that the testimony
collected to which you object as ex parte, was deemed sufficient by the Executive
of the State to establish the line, I am now running, as the true line between
the Creek and Cherokee tribes of Indians, prior to the Convention between those
tribes, in December, 1821. Their agreement on the subject of their boundary
at that time, fixing the Buzzard Roost on the Chatahoochie River, as one point,
and the mouth of Will's Creek as the other, is not considered as binding, either
on the United States or Georgia, because neither were a party to it; and the
law to which you refer makes that agreement voice. The paper you enclose
me as evidence of a conference between the Creeks and Cherokees, on the 9th
of August, 1814, by which their boundary purports to be defined and settled,
and which has the signature of General Jackson to it, is pronounced by him to
be false; (see his letter on the subject to the Secretary of War, dated 4th
June, 1816.) The treaty with the Creeks, at Washington City, in 1826,
to which you also refer me, as settling definitively on the boundary between
the Creeks and Cherokees, never has been nor never will be, recognized by the
State of Georgia, as a valid instrument. The treaty of 1825, at the Indian
Springs, had preceded it, and ceded for the use of Georgia, all the land owned
by the Creeks within the chartered limits of the State. It is under this
treaty, that Georgia claims the land South of the line running from Suwanna
Old Town, on the Chatahoochie, to the Sixas Old Town, on the Etowah.
I am, Sir, your ob't servant.
SAMUEL A. WALES.
Col. HUGH MONTGOMERY,
U.S. Agent for the Cherokees.

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